Oh So Crafty!

In my past life (you know, the one where I wasn't one of my child's vital organs), I loved to craft.  And exercise.  I worked out every day.  LOVED it.  I was a Jazzercise Superstar!  And I made stuff.  Scrapbooks.  Crafty stuff.  All the time. 

But when diabetes entered our lives, all that went out the door.

Diabetes consumed so much of my time, energy, and thoughts that there was no room left for anything else.

For the last (almost) 3 years, I have focused on Sweetpea.  And Sweetpea alone.

Her health, her happiness, her diabetes care...  it's been all consuming.  And I can't say that I totally regret that because I think it's made me a pretty good pancreas.  And it has kept her healthy.  And happy.

But now... now it's time to reclaim a little bit of my old life.  I think I'm FINALLY to place where that can actually happen.  A little of the dust has cleared and it's just time...

So I thought I'd share with you some of the things I have been doing. 

First off is exercising.  That's really a post for another day but so far so good.  I have dreams of doing a half marathon in the Spring (walking).  I think it's doable.  I'm working on it.

I've found that crafting really helps me relieve some stress.  Working on something helps me calm down.  It helps me focus on something other than blood sugar numbers.  It makes me feel good when it's completed.

Yeah, sometimes I'm up really late working on something.  And it doesn't happen every day.  But it's a start on getting me back to the healthy person that I used to be.

So....  here we go!  My Craftiness on Display!

This is the turkey shirt I made for Sweets for Thanksgiving!  I got a little crazy with the ribbons...

This is the Rudolph shirt that I made her for Christmas.  This is one of my favorites!

These are the reindeer ornaments that I made for the parents of the kids in my class at school.  It is their thumb prints made into reindeer!

 

This is the Christmas Tree shirt - and matching hair bow - that I made out of ribbon!  

I made these ornaments in honor of diabetes awareness!  They go great with "January" colors, too!  I have them in the glass vase and sitting on our kitchen table.  I think they look really pretty all together.  I took a close up pic so you can see the glitter!  SO EASY!

I made these clipboards for Sweets to hang her artwork on.  I just took regular clipboards and added a little paint, ribbon, and scrapbook paper!

This is what I did with them!  I painted the letters ART (J says, "Why are spelling TAR?"  har har) and hung them on the door to our basement - which is in our kitchen.  Then I hung the clipboards.  This way she is able to change her artwork around WITHOUT using tape or magenting it all over my pretty new fridge.  It's a nice, clean display!

Staying with efforts to keep tape off my walls, I made Sweets some magnet boards.  These are just cookie sheets that I spray pained and added scrapbook paper to.  She got to pick out the colors that she wanted.  I added her name with letter stickers to the green part.  I'm also in the process of drilling holes and adding some ribbon to hang it with.  These are for her bed room.  I made three using different kinds of paper.

I also just go the stuff to make one HUGE magnet board for her room.  I may put that one over her desk and sprinkle the others elsewhere.  The girl loves to tape things up.

This little project has been all over Pinterest (which is where I get most of my ideas, btw.  There's a little button over there to the right.  You can follow me.  Be warned: A lot of my posting is school related!)  I painted my nails and did that thing where you put writing on them.  I got fancy and tried to print off my own words. You can't really tell but the words say "hope faith cure diabetes".  If I were to do this again, I'd change some things.

And this I made for my parents for Christmas!  It's a chipboard letter that I added photos to!  Their last name starts with M, if you are wondering!  It turned out so cute that I'll probably make one for us, too!

As I'm looking at this, I'm realizing that I don't have pics of the bows.  My FAVORITE thing to make is hair bows for Sweets!  I've made a ton!  I LOVE them!  It's so fun - and cheaper than buying them.  Mostly.  Because you probably already know that she needs a bow to coordinate with each outfit.  Two actually because she usually wears piggies.  I can post those later...

So there you have it! 

If you'd like any directions for any of these projects, I'm happy to share!  Just leave me a comment and I'll write up a tutorial!

So go on, now... get your craft on!  Or whatever YOU need to do to help YOU de-stress and get back a little of you "old" self.  Even if it's only once a month or whatever.  It will make you feel better.

And you know what?

You're worth it!